NAME

groffer - display groff files and man pages on X and tty

SYNOPSIS

groffer [viewing_options] [man_options] [groff_options] [--] [file-
spec...]
groffer -h|--help
groffer -v|--version
viewing_options
These options determine and configure the display mode. They
were synchronized with the options of both groff(1) and GNU
man(1). As groff uses almost any letter in its option set, only
long option names are available for most features. If none of
these options is used groffer tries to find a suitable display
mode automatically.
[-Q|--source] [-T|--device device] [--auto-modes
mode1,mode2,...] [--debug] [--default] [--dvi] [--dvi-viewer
prog] [--groff] [--location] [--mode display_mode] [--pager
program] [--pdf] [--pdf-viewer prog] [--ps] [--ps-viewer prog]
[--shell] [--tty] [--www] [--www-viewer prog] [--x] [--x-viewer
prog]
The following long options were adapted from the corresponding X
Toolkit options with a single leading minus; see X(1).
[--bd] [--bg|--background] [--bw] [--display] [--fg|--foreground
] [--ft|--font] [--geometry size_pos] [--resolution value] [--rv
] [--title string] [--xrm X_resource]
groff_options
Any combination of (short) options from the groff(1) program is
accepted; the options that are not explicitly handled by groffer
are transparently passed to groff. Due to the automatism in
groffer, none of these groff options should be necessary, except
for advanced usage.
Because of the special outputting behavior of the groff options
-V, -X, and -Z, groffer was designed to be switched into groff
mode by each of these options; in this mode, the groffer viewing
features are disabled.
The other groff options do not switch the mode, but allow to
customize the formatting process. Useful groff formatting op-
tions include -m (to add macro files that cannot be recognized
by grog), and -T (to specify an alternative device for the modes
tty and x).
man_options
These options regulate whether and how man pages are searched.
They are compatible with the long options of the GNU man pro-
gram.
[--all] [--ascii] [--apropos] [--ditroff] [--extension suffix]
[--locale language] [--local-file] [--man] [--manpath
dir1:dir2:...] [--no-location] [--no-man] [--sections
sec1:sec2:...] [--systems sys1,sys2,...] [--troff-device
device] [--whatis]
The GNU man long options that are not mentioned are recognized,
but they are just ignored because of alternative implementa-
tions. The full set of long and short options of the GNU man
program can be passed via the environment variable $MANOPT; see
man(1) if your system has GNU man installed.
filespec
is a sequence of file names or templates for searching
man pages, see man(1). A filespec can have one of the following
forms.
filename the path name of an existing file.
- stands for standard input (can occur several times).
man:name(section)
search the man page name in section section.
man:name.section
search the man page name in section section.
man:name search the man page name in the lowest available sec-
tion.
name(section)
search the man page name in section section.
name.section
search the man page name in section section.
standard_section
if this is `1', ..., `9', `o', or `n' try to retrieve
the next argument as a man page in this section.
name search for the man page name in the lowest available
section.
No filespec parameters means standard input.
For details on the options, see section OPTIONS.

DESCRIPTION

The groffer program is part of groff(7). It can be used to display ar-
bitrary documents written in the roff(7) formatting language in several
different ways, in an X window viewer program or in a text terminal.
The viewer programs can be chosen as the groff native viewer
gxditview(1), a Postcript or dvi display program, or a web browser.
A search facility for manual pages ( man pages) is provided. Almost
the whole functionality of the GNU man program was provided or suitably
adapted. This makes the groffer program a valuable tool on systems
with a poor man system.
The program always concatenates all input specified by the non-option
parameters of the calling command line or standard input. Compressed
standard input or files are decompressed on-the-fly.
Normally, the input is run through the groff(1) text processor before
being displayed. By using the option -Q, the roff source code is dis-
played without formatting.
The formatting process can be regulated by all options that are avail-
able groff. By using the -T option, groffer can be switched to behave
exactly like groff without using its viewer facilities, but additional-
ly with the search and decompression features.
All necessary options can be determined automatically. For example,
the groffer program internally uses the grog(1) program to determine
from the unformatted document which preprocessors should be run and
which macro files should be included. But all parts of the program can
be controlled manually by suitable options.

OPTIONS

The groffer program provides its own parser for command line options
that is compatible to both POSIX getopts(1) and GNU getopt(1). The
command line behaves as usually. For completeness, the details are
provided here.
Option Parsing
The following types of options are supported, equally on all systems
that are able to run the groffer program:
o single character options are always preceded by a single minus char-
acter, for example, -c.
o the argument for a single character option is the next command line
argument, for example, -o arg, or can be appended to the option
character within the same argument -o arg.
o clusters of such single character options without an argument, even-
tually terminated by a single character option with an argument; for
example, -abo arg is equivalent to -a -b -o arg .
o Long options, that means option with names longer than one character
are always prededed by a double minus; an option argument can either
go to the next command line argument or be appended with an equal
sign to the argument; for example, --long= arg is equivalent to
--long arg.
o An argument of -- ends option parsing; all further command line argu-
ments are interpreted as filespec arguments.
o By default, all command line arguments that are neither options nor
option arguments are interpreted as filespec parameters and stored
until option parsing has finished. For example, the command line
sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2
is, by default, equivalent to
sh# groffer -a -o arg -- file1 file 2
o This behavior can be changed by setting the environment variable
$POSIXLY_CORRECT to a non-empty value; in this case, option process-
ing is stopped as soon as the first non-option argument is found.
For example, in posixly correct mode, the command line
sh# groffer file1 -a -o arg file 2
is equivalent to
sh# groffer -- file1 -a -o arg file 2
As this leads to unwanted behavior in most cases, most people do not
want to set $POSIXLY_CORRECT.
Compatibility with Options from other Programs
All short options of groffer are compatible with the short options of
groff(1). Some of the groff options were given a special meaning with-
in groffer. All other groff options are supported by groffer, but they
are just transparently transferred to groff without any intervention.
Therefore these transparent options are not documented here, but in
groff(1).
All long options of groffer are compatible with the long options of
man(1). Most of the man long options were implemented as native op-
tions into groffer. These options are documented in the following; the
other man options are recognized, but ignored.
Native groffer Options
-h Print usage message to standard error and exit.
-Q Output the roff source code of the input files unprocessed.
This is the equivalent --mode source.
-T devname
Switch to --mode device, thus disabling the groffer viewing.
Instead, the input is formatted and postprocessed using plain
groff with devname as the output device. The allowed device
names are listed in groff(1). Note that this forces all device
names that begin with the letter X to be displayed with
gxditview(1); all other device names generate output for the
specified device; this is printed onto standard output without a
pager.
-v Print version information onto standard error.
-V Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff option -V
; this produces the groff calling pipe without formatting the
input. This an advanced option from groff(1), only useful for
debugging.
-X Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff option -X
; actually, this formats the input and displays it with
gxditview(1). This differs from groffer's mode x because grof-
fer's viewer options are not used, but the viewer is configured
like in groff with the groff option -P. This option is in-
hereted from groff(1).
-Z Switch into groff mode and format the input with groff option -Z
; this produces the groff intermediate output without postpro-
cessing; see groff_out(1). This an advanced option from
groff(1), useful for debugging.
--all In searching man pages, retrieve all suitable ones instead of
only one.
--apropos
Instead of displaying, start the `apropos' command for searching
within man page descriptions; only kept for compatibility with
`man'.
--auto-modes mode1,mode2,...
Set the sequence of modes for default mode to the comma separat-
ed list given in the argument.
--background color
This is equivalent to --bg.
--bd pixels
Specifies the color of the border surrounding the viewer window.
This is an adaption of the X Toolkit option -bd. The argument
is an X color name, see (1) for details.
--bg color
Set the background color of the viewer window. This is an adap-
tion of the X Toolkit option -bg. The argument is an X color
name, see (1) for details.
--bw pixels
Specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the
viewer window (not available for all viewers). This is an adap-
tion of the X Toolkit option -bw.
--debug
Print debugging information. Actually, a function call stack is
printed if an error occurs.
--default
Reset all configuration from previously processed command line
options to the default values. This is useful to wipe out all
effects of former options and restart option processing using
only the rest of the command line.
--device
Eqivalent to -T.
--display X-display
Set the X display on which the viewer program shall be started,
see X(1) for the syntax of the argument.
--ditroff
Eqivalent to -Z. This is kept for compatibiliy with GNU man(1).
--dvi Choose dvi mode; the formatted input is displayed with the by
default, the formatted input is displayed with the xdvi(1) pro-
gram.
--dvi-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for dvi mode. This can be a file name or
a program to be searched in $PATH. Known dvi viewers inlude xd-
vi(1) and dvilx(1) In each case, arguments can be provided addi-
tionally.
--extension suffix
Restrict man page search to file names that have suffix appended
to their section element. For example, in the file name
/usr/share/man/man3/terminfo.3ncurses.gz the man page extension
is ncurses. Originates from GNU man.
--foreground color
This is equivalent to -fg.
--fg color
Set the foreground color of the viewer window. This is an adap-
tion of the X Toolkit option -bg. The argument is an X color
name, see (1) for details.
--font font_name
This is equivalent to -ft.
--ft font_name
Set the font used by the viewer window. This is an adaption of
the X Toolkit option -ft. The argument is an X font name, see
(1) for details.
--geometry size_pos
Set the geometry of the display window, that means its size and
its starting position. See X(1) for details on the syntax of
the argument. If the actual display mode is not X then this op-
tion is ignored.
--groff
Set groff mode. Switch groffer to process the input like
groff(1). This disables the groffer viewing features, all grof-
fer viewing options are ignored.
--help Eqivalent to -h.
--location
Print the location of the retrieved files to standard error.
--locale language
Set the language for man pages. This option originates from GNU
man(1).
--man Check the non-option command line arguments (filespecs) first on
being man pages, then whether they represent an existing file.
By default, a filespec is first tested if it is an existing
file.
--manpath 'dir1:dir2:...'
Use the specified search path for retrieving man pages instead
of the program defaults. If the argument is set to the empty
string "" the search for man page is disabled.
--mode value
Set the display mode. The following mode values are recognized:
auto Display in the default manner; this actually means to try
the modes ps, x, and tty in this sequence. Useful for
restoring default mode when a different mode was speci-
fied with $GROFFER_OPT.
dvi Display formatted input in a dvi viewer program; equiva-
lent to --dvi.
pdf Display formatted input in a PDF (Portable Document For-
mat) viewer program; equivalent to --pdf.
ps Display formatted input in a Postscript viewer program;
equivalent to --ps.
tty Display formatted input in a text terminal; equivalent to
--tty.
www Display formatted input in a internet browser program;
equivalent to --www.
x Display formatted input in a native roff viewer such as
gxditview(1);equivalentto --x.
The following modes do not use the groffer viewing features.
They are only interesting for advanced applications.
groff Generate device output with plain groff without using the
special viewing features of groffer. If no device was
specified by option -T the groff default ps is assumed.
source Display source code; same as -Q.
--no-location
Do not display the location of retireved files; this resets a
former call to --location.
--no-man
Do not check for man pages.
--pager
Set the pager program in tty mode; default is less.
--pdf Choose pdf mode (Portable Document Format). By default, the in-
put is formatted by groff using the Postscript device, then it
is transformed into the PDF file format using gs(1) (this is
quite slow), and finally displayed either with the xpdf(1) or
the acroread(1) program; this can be configured with option
--viewer-pdf. PDF has a big advantage because the text is dis-
played graphically and is searchable nevertheless; but as
thtransformation into pdf takes a considerable amount of time,
the pdf mode is not suitable as a default device for the auto
mode. The only device that is compatible to this mode is ps,
which is also the default when no device is specified.
--pdf-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for pdf mode. This can be a file name or
a program to be searched in $PATH. In each case, arguments can
be provided additionally.
--ps Choose ps mode (Postscript). By default, the formatted input is
displayed with the ghostview(1) program; this can be configured
with option --viewer-ps. The only device that is compatible to
this mode is ps, which is also the default when no device is
specified.
--ps-viewer prog
Set the viewer program for ps mode. This can be a file name or
a program to be searched in $PATH. Common Postscript viewers
inlude gv(1), ghostview(1), and gs(1), In each case, arguments
can be provided additionally.
--resolution value
Set X resolution in dpi (dots per inch) in some viewer programs.
The only supported dpi values are 75 and 100. This is an adap-
tion of the X Toolkit option -resolution.
--rv Reverse foreground and background color of the viewer window.
This is an adaption of the X Toolkit option -rv. This feature
is not available in all viewer programs.
--sections
Restrict searching for man pages to the given sections, a colon-
separated list.
--shell shell_program
Specify the shell under which the groffer script should be run.
The script first tests whether this option is set (either within
$GROFF_OPT or as a command line option); if so, the script is
rerun under the shell program specified with the option argu-
ment.
--source
Equivalent to -Q.
--systems
Search for man pages for the given operating systems; the argu-
ment systems is a comma-separated list.
--title 'some text'
Set the title for the viewer window. This feature is not avail-
able in all viewer programs.
--to-postproc opt_or_arg
Eqivalent to -P.
--troff-device
Eqivalent to -T. This option is only kept for compatibility
with GNU man(1).
--tty Choose tty display mode, that means displaying in a text pager
even when in X; eqivalent to --mode tty.
--version
Eqivalent to -v.
--whatis
Instead of displaying the content, get the one-liner description
from the retrieved man page files